“The Lazy Song” Bruno Mars (#6 Billboard Hot 100, Week of May 7, 2011)

Well, well, well.  We meet again, oh lazy song.  After being my poster child for how you can overinterpret a song (see this post), Bruno Mars comes bounding into this week’s top 10 as the only new entry.

Bruno Mars, like Ne-Yo, is a songwriter first.  Whatever he does to dress up the song in the recording studio is first and foremost designed as a flattering fit for the lyrics he wrote.  To the gimmick-happy music fan, this might read as boring, but to me it’s refreshing.  Imagine songs where the lyrics are a beginning point and not an afterthought.  Bruno Mars certainly has.

Fortunately, the music fans, even the gimmick-happy ones, don’t appear to be bored yet with the Hawaiian dude with the nifty hooks.  It’s a wonder.  “The Lazy Song” features an appropriately lazy arrangement which is little more than a reggae backing track on autopilot.  The lyrics shine, however, with a humorous and borderline naughty edge that can be forgiven because they express, more or less, what a guy really thinks when he’s stranded in bed on an unproductive day.

Not to say that the song structure itself isn’t impeccable.  It’s just as solid, airtight, and downright concise as his other two smash hits of the past year.  I almost want to call him a modern day Billy Joel, but I’m afraid I might start a fire, so to speak.